Parts install and Tune update: 7/2/14 & 7/3/14

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of an update. I've been quite busy with the holiday weekend. Anyhow here we go:

Wednesday afternoon was spent installing the Invidia catted downpipe that has been so anxiously waiting in my basement and the Cobb Intake with air box I just received in the mail a week prior. Let me tell you, removing the old downpipe, by myself, was an absolute PITA and took me quite a bit longer than I had imagined. Anyhow, lets cut to the chase. Here are some mandatory pre-install pictures:

Now, in order to successfully remove the old downpipe, I had to first remove my GrimmSpeed turbo heat shield. Next I unbolted the downpipe from my Invidia midpipe. Those were fairly easy. I started to try and figure out exactly what else needed to be unbolted in order to remove the downpipe. There were two brackets that secure the stock downpipe to the transmission. One of which would be reused in the installation of the Invidia pipe. Once those were removed I realized that I needed to remove the Intercooler for easy access to two of the bolts on the back side of the turbo. So I removed the BPV, and the three 14mm bolts holding the intercooler to the engine, as well as unclamped it from the throttle body intake hose. I then made sure to plug said hose with a microfiber towel so no debris could get in the intake. Once the intercooler was removed I was able to access all of the bolts from the turbo to the downpipe. I let the bolts soak in PB blaster for 20 minutes or so to assure there would be no problems removing them. SIDE NOTE: I would heavily not recommend accidentally letting a drop of PB blaster drip into your eye... that was awfully unpleasant. At any rate, unfortunately, these bolts on the turbo were still not very easy to access, let alone break loose. So, after many of yelled profanities and curse words the bolts magically broke loose! No, I wish though. Profanities were still slung at every moment, busted a couple knuckles, and finally after a good amount of elbow grease, grunting and some make shift breaker bars I was able to break loose all 5 nuts and bolts. Sweet, time to take it off and slip the new dowpipe right in, right? Wrong... Come to find out I needed to unbolt the midpipe from the axel back section of my q300 in order to give myself enough clearance to slide the downpipe off the studs and out of the bottom of the car. This is when I started yelling more profanities because I don't have access to a lift. Anyhow, FINALLY, the downpipe came off!!! WOOO!!! The new one went on very easy and matted right up. Zero fitment issues. I had to purchase a new gasket to go between the dowpipe and the turbo and I acquired that through GrimmSpeed for all of $21. Once everything was softly bolted up and matted up to the way I liked it, I went through and tightened down all of the bolts that need to be tightened down, reinstalled my heat shield, then reinstalled my intercooler and BPV. No issues. One more side note: I went ahead and uninstalled my stock intake before I did my downpipe so I had more room to work with under the hood, and it actually ended up helping a bit. Here are some pictures.

TMIC removed, old DP still in place.

Here is the turbo outlet into the Intercooler. I had some issues with the left bolt as it was fairly corroded. It finally came out, but it pulled out a thread or two with it. I was afraid I was going to have to Tap and Die this but thankfully, I ended up not needing to. When I bolted everything back up this bolt seated perfectly and nice and snug as well.

Here is a picture of the completed TBE, fitment was flawless as expected.

Now, for the intake. This was straight forward and easy. As I said before, I removed the stock intake before removing the DP for easier access. Once the DP was installed I went ahead and installed the Cobb Intake and Airbox. This was slightly more difficult than I had expected it to be but still fairly simple none the less. I won't bore you with install step-by-step as Cobb has installation instructions for this on their website.

Here is another Picture! This is after everything was competed. Pretty huh?

Finally comes the part you all were waiting for, the tune. I drove down to Turn in Concepts (TiC) Cincinnati OH on thursday morning. Granted I didn't have any sort of tune on there with my parts so I drove with a feather on the gas pedal. It was hard, but I had to do it for the greater good! NOTE: I was told to do this by my tuner, and he said that with the mods I had there wouldn't be any serious issues as long as I kept my foot off the pedal. Once I got down there I signed some paperwork and talked to Dom as to how I would like my tune oriented. I picked a nice conservatively balanced tune between reliability and power as this is my daily driver. After all was said and done, Dom did a fantastic job and I am SO happy with the results. The difference between the stock tune and this tune Dom did on my car is unbelievable and hard to explain in words. It made a world of difference in terms of the new power he gave my car. All in all I ended up with a peak WHP reading of 271HP and just shy of 300lbs of torque at a peak boost of 17psi. I am very happy with these numbers and even happier with the way the car performs.

The graph below shows 3 different pulls. The red lines are from a base reading pull with my mods on there and the proper MAF scaling, otherwise on the stock map. The blue/purple curves show a final, 4th gear run. Finally, the gray curves are the 3rd gear pull that he did. Now, he explained as to my why the peak HP is different between 3rd and 4th gear pulls. In his words this is basically because when you do a 4th gear pull on the dyno, the intercooler gets hotter than that if you did it 3rd gear. Thus resulting in the better numbers achieved in 3rd gear as opposed to 4th.

Small update: Went back down to Cincinnati on Friday to have Dom check on the tune and everything couldn't be more perfect.

On a second note, received my oil analysis via email this weekend as well. This one was from before my tune. All looks well with this too. I plan to send another sample in before my next oil change, and then again after I do my first run of Redline 0w30. Here is the sheet they sent me:

UPDATE: So I received a special delivery from WTF Tuning yesterday afternoon. Trying to find a window to install my new DeFi Boost Gauge and my Innovate Motorsports LC-2. Currently waiting on some more mini fuse taps to come into my local auto parts store. They should be here this afternoon. Which means that If I have enough time tonight both of these gauges may be going on. Otherwise tomorrow, or Sunday. I will do a writeup on these installs as well as they are not quite as simple as plug and play.

8/29/2014 Install

So early last week I got my Innovate LC-2 with a gauge and a DeFi Red boost gauge, courtesy of WTF Tuning once again. So this writeup will be short and sweet because, frankly, it was a bitch of an install. At any rate, once I found out exactly what I needed to do and where what needed to be routed it was fairly easy to git-r-done. Unlike anything else I have done so far though, I had to actually map out wiring diagrams.

The hardest part was trying to figure out where to run the wiring from the boost module to the boost gauge and the wideband sensor wiring to the LC-2 unit (which is in the cabin). There is a rubber grommet where some wiring is run through the fire will with an available port to cut a hole through. This is where I ran all the wiring through the fire wall. You run only what you need to run from the cabin to the engine bay through that hole, up through the fender well and the wiring will spit out just on top of the quarter panel. All of this is shown in the pictures below. Once that is taken care of I had to find out a way to wire the DeFi gauge, LC-2, and DB gauge that hooks up to the LC-2 unit. This wasn't too bad and I wired all three to the same places if they needed it. The Defi needed the most wiring as it calls for a constant power source for some reason. I had to buy 3 fuse taps from the local auto parts store to tap into the appropriate power sources. Below are the fuse numbers to tap into for the the specified need:

Those are mostly for the boost gauge. I tapped into the source if any of the other two (LC-2 or DB gauge) needed said source. But no other fuses needed tapping into other than those. I would like to also note that the ignition fuse tap only worked upside down, opposite as pictured. This may or may not be the case for someone else. After I spliced everything together, I then tested it all to see if everything what getting power. After a few trials I finally got everything working correctly. I ended up running one 18 gauge wire back through the firewall and into the engine bay to hook up to the negative battery post for the ground wires needed for all three items.

Once the wiring was done the rest was cake. I slipped (more of forced, cursed and screamed, this wasn't as easy as it should have been) the two gauges into my SMY Clustermaker gauge pod, hooked up and found a suitable location for the boost module (pictured), then I installed and properly calibrated the wideband O2 sensor.

What would a good install be without some pictures?:

This is sort of the start, stock cluster bezel removed and wiring started. I was a little late on realizing I needed to start taking pictures.

In order to get to the back side of the rubber grommet I needed to pull the emblemed part of the paneling in front of the door off. Then after removing my mudflap, I unscrewed the wheel well liner and pulled it back. From there, with some added light, you should be able to see where the OEM wiring harness is run through the firewall. Above the harness is a free bit of the grommet in which I cut an X in to run all the wiring. From there I ran what In needed down the inside of the wheel well and through the fire wall.

This is the firewall access from the inside, just to the left of the clutch pedal.

This shows my wiring mess and the tapped fuses in the fuse panel.

I attached the boost module to one of the clips on the fuel line by the master brake cylinder. Which gave me very easy access to the vacuum line on the stock bypass valve.

Finally I ran the wiring harness to the wideband O2 sensor that is set right on top of my dowpipe right past the turbo.

Annnd here is the finished product.

EDIT: I wrote this up while fairly tipsy. I will read back through this for errors and edits in the morning/afternoon/evening..... maybe.

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